ITalent

Our mission is to bridge the employment gap for international & diverse students and help them grow their skills and experience to build meaningful careers.

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Inspiration

In 2017, 37.1 per cent of Generation Z women were expected to attend university compared with 27.3 per cent of young men. Yet, according to Oleeo’s figures, 63 per cent of applicants were male and just 37 per cent were female. Equally only 15 per cent of black and Hispanic applicants were successful in being accepted onto graduate schemes, compared to a combined 85 per cent of their white and Asian counterparts. Although this report is dated 2017, due to the pandemic the world, have these figures really changed that much over the past 5 years? A recent more recent survey found that 83% of the generation agree inclusion and diversity is an essential factor when selecting an employer. Diversity in the workplace is essential for ensuring equity, inclusion, and better work environments. The same can be said of inclusion. However, diversity and inclusion don’t mean simply having a diverse group of workers ranging in age, race, and abilities. It also needs to include an opportunity for sharing differing thoughts, values, and opinions.

A diverse workforce offers benefits from improved problem-solving to increased innovation throughout all business functions. Tapping into a wide range of experience, knowledge and expertise also means a better bottom line. The key to recruiting a diverse workforce lies in effective diversity recruiting strategies. By developing a diversity recruitment plan, eliminating bias from the recruitment and hiring process, broadening talent search to be more inclusive and consistently reviewing the data to track conversion rates between these stages and to understand what which areas need to attention for improvement.

The Canadian economy alone will need to fill 250,000 tech jobs over the next three years. According to a recent report by the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), at least 55 per cent of Canadian tech entrepreneurs are “struggling to hire the employees they need.” There are two main problems with this. The first one is the inaccessibility of a centralized platform which everyone can rely upon for their needs. The second lies in the restrictions being placed on the candidates based on some algorithms / automated screening processes that prevent them to enter a particular market and test their skills. The consequence of this is skilled candidates with the potential and or experience/skills working in roles where they are undervalued and overqualified.

What it does

ITalent is a job search platform & talent marketplace for international students. The platform connects international students from various institutions across the globe with employers who value diversity & inclusion while offering networking & mentorship opportunities, and resources tailored to meet their specific needs. Our mission is to bridge the employment gap for international students and help them build meaningful careers in a new country.

According to the data being published by the IRCC in Canada, the study permits granted to people across the country in the year 2021 were combined at around 130000. But these people face the issue of feeling disconnected from opportuniites, and the recruitment process overall. After conducting user interviews, many have to worry about getting part-time work to support their families. Now our platform is providing all sorts of work to these people keeping in mind their needs. Our employers would want to hire these people when they arrive in the new countries since our platform is giving them the opportunity to test their skills for a certain period of time thereby satisfying their needs and thus allowing students' interests and education to be valued. The other feature we are giving is the opportunity for the new employers in the market to showcase themselves to the database of all these individuals and thereby make themselves promoted. It solves the problem of inclusion even more by letting people network and refer to each other according to their skills. We are initially planning to keep it more based in Canada and see how it works. But with the number of people facing this issue, it can be easily pushed globally.

How we built it

HTML, CSS, SCSS, Javascript, Python, Flask, React.js, Node.js

Challenges we ran into

Communication between team members, challenges navigating new technologies, and time zone differences.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Proud of the work that we accomplished in this short period of time, and the new things that we learned from this event. We have a prototype, deck with business models and a working preliminary website that enables users to filter by skills and view opportunities in an easy to view manner. The user interface is very customizable and can be integrated with existing APIs to maximize its potential.

What we learned

In terms of technicals, We learned react.js, a bit of node.js, as well as how the backend works. We also learned about the APIs out there that can be integrated/paired with our user interface. In terms of soft skills, we learned the importance of collaboration, teamwork, and planning. This was a great experience and will enable us to improve our skills for future events/hackathons.

What's next for ITalent

If we had more time, we would hope to expand on the features and be able to complete an AR/VR portion for the website that enables users to look at the workplace. We also would be interested in implementing the AI/ML matching algorithm to tailor specific jobs or opportunities to the user.

Domains registered with domain.com:

workgloballyin.tech biggig.tech pathto.tech empowerin.tech

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